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When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment
 
 
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When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment [Paperback]

Kenneth Adams (Author), Alexander P. Morgan (Contributor)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Book Description

March 13, 2007

When a Woman Is in an Emotional Tug-of-War for Her Man's Heart

Why can't he commit? Many women find themselves asking this question when in love with a man who won't get married, won't stop womanizing, or refuses to give up his sex addictions. Often this kind of man is bound by an unhealthy attachment to his mother. This phenomenon is called "mother-son enmeshment." In When He's Married to Mom, clinical psychologist and renowned intimacy expert Dr. Kenneth M. Adams goes beyond the stereotypes of momma's boys and meddling mothers to explain how mother-son enmeshment affects everyone: the mother, the son, and the woman who loves him. In his twenty-five years of practice, Dr. Adams has successfully treated hundreds of enmeshed men and shares their stories in this informative guide. He provides proven methods to make things better, including:

-- Guidelines to help women create fulfilling relationships with mother-enmeshed men

-- Tools to help mother-enmeshed men have healthy and successful dating experiences leading to serious relationships and marriage

-- Strategies to help parents avoid enmeshing their children

When He's Married to Mom provides practical and compassionate advice to the women who are involved with mother-enmeshed men, to the mothers who wish to set them free, and to the men themselves.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Psychologist Adams and scientist/writer Morgan revisit territory covered in Adams' first book, Silently Seduced: parents and children becoming too close. Here they focus on "men who have excessive emotional ties to their mothers. They feel trapped, guilty, and disloyal when attempting to follow their own wishes and lead their own lives." Half of the chapters are dedicated to case histories from Adams' psychological practice, outlining seven species of mother-enmeshed men (MEM): commitment-phobe, womanizer, perpetual adolescent, burned-out caretaker, cybersex addict, disappointed hero and lost man. These are followed by a questionnaire designed to determine if the reader is an MEM, and a chapter on seeking therapy. The final third of the book is dedicated to advice: for MEM to improve their interpersonal relationships, for women romantically involved with MEM, and for parents who want to avoid raising MEM. Authors Adams and Morgan offer a logical and practical survey of the Oedipus complex in the modern world.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Dr. Ken Adams has done it again. This book on mother-son enmeshment explains not only this too little understood developmental block, but points the way to liberation. The absence of psychobabble makes it clear reading both for victims and their clinicians." -- John Franklin, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Counseling and Addiction Studies, University of Detroit Mercy

ﻯ

"An engaging, clear, and extremely useful examination of this most common of family problems....’ÄÂI do a lot of couples therapy in my practice, and this is one of the most common unhealthy dynamics I see. This book will be enormously helpful." -- John C. Friel, Ph.D., author of Adult Children

"It is a compelling, insightful, and helpful guide out of the sexual and romantic labyrinths families weave." -- Patrick J. Carnes, Ph.D., author of Out of the Shadows


Product Details

  • Paperback: 267 pages
  • Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (March 13, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0743291387
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743291385
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
5 star:
 (8)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent - A real-eye-opener!!, July 3, 2007
This review is from: When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment (Paperback)
I had read our library's copy of this book. It was informative and had easy-to-read case studies of men who are enmeshed with their mothers. More importantly, it contains suggestions on how to help the guys out of this dilemna or helps the gals see when it's time to end the relationship.

I just ordered two copies for gifts. Ladies, if you've run into too many 'momma's boys' or 'commitment-phobes," this could be the book for you.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Best Book on Momma's boys, July 14, 2007
By 
YOGIGURU (Orange County CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment (Paperback)
I read the book in the library as well. What an eye opener. I just ended a relationship with a man a few months ago who was a surrogate husband to his mom. The book also mentions that a lot of these momma's boys still keep exes around. My ex did. He had a harem of exes around him and it bothered me. That wasn't the reason I broke up with him, but part of it.

The books gives some good tips on dealing with momma's boy. However I'm not willing to wait another 5 years while he's in therapy to help him on his healing journal. I'm not into rehab projects. I'll hold out for a more mentally healthy normal male.

If any woman is involved with a momma's boy, this book will validate all the feelings she's felt by being 2nd or even last in the relationship.
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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting theories, but badly overreaches, August 28, 2007
This review is from: When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment (Paperback)
Despite the title and a couple of chapters that bring up images of a Mommy Dearest actively destroying a son's (and daughter-in-law's) life, Kenneth Adams' When He's Married to Mom is really more of a continuation of his argument that parental influence matters an awful lot in adult behavior. While several of his case studies make fascinating and disturbing reading, he takes a large leap of faith in presuming his chosen therapy focus is the grand unified solution to a whole bunch of personality disorder problems and doesn't do a particularly good job in proving causality. Normally that'd be worth taking it down to 3 stars, but I'll round it up to 4 stars given he at least cites other literature in the field and the core argument about parental relationships remains worth a read.

Adams is far from the first therapist to point out the importance of the bonds between mothers and sons - think Freud to start, and a lot of people contributing along the way. Adams' specific focus is on "Mother-Enmeshed Men", MEM for short, to which he draws several little square and circle diagrams illustrating the fouled up relationships that caused and result from both. It's fairly interesting stuff, even though at times the book feels like it should have the theme music from the old Police song "Mother" playing along - "every girl I go out with becomes my mother in the end!" Some of the personalities defined in the case studies went through some very nasty upbringings, and its worth a read if for nothing else just for showing how not to behave as a parent. (Probably the best anecdote he relates about this is how after a presentation on MEMs to a large group of fellow therapists, one got up to the microphone, admitted she had done some really dumb things as a mom, and was going to therapy herself.)

Adams, though, badly overreaches in ascribing a MEM relationship as the sole cause of many disorders. A 20 question self-survey to find out if the man you love is a MEM has questions that could (and probably should) fall into any number of disorders straight out of DSM-IV, and while his use of citations of other work does provide validation for some theories (a man who stays stuck in a dead end job probably has low self esteem) claiming it as a grand unified theory is a bit much. His solution may work for some people - although the ideal time for a patient in therapy (his only solution) is five years with a rare lucky one finishing up in two, so if MEMs do exist and you're dating one, you may not really like the effort he demands - and it's an interesting step in his field, but there's an awful, awful lot here that feels like it's a stretch.

Still, it's a very interesting read for the do-not-do list on parenting even if those who've split up with an ex who had major mommy issues may not get as much out of it as they'd hoped for from the title; there are probably better books for them elsewhere, and besides, the whole point of postmortem relationship examination is to figure yourself out, not the ex. 4 stars.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
enmeshing mother, enmeshment issues, unconscious templates, commitment phobia, joint therapy
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Father Mark, Disloyalty Bind, False Self, True Self, Relationship Plan, Patrick Carnes, Lost Identity
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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